Feral Knitter

The Redbud Vest Pattern

I'm so happy to announce that the Redbud Vest Pattern is now available! I designed this vest a couple of years ago because I wanted a garment that used the lovely and flattering pink shades that Spindrift offers, without the inappropriate girlishness of so many pink sweaters. The four shades of pink are balanced by grays and browns, with some spring green to liven things up. 

I added waist and shoulder shaping to flatter a woman's shape. This vest looks good on many bodies and the pattern is written for seven sizes, from 34.25" to 51.5"—see how it looks on Rachael, below:

Writing up and publishing a Fair Isle sweater design is a complex business; over the last two years a number of you have asked when this would be available. Well, now it is! Simply Shetland has published this design as a paper pattern and you can now purchase it (and yarn packs) at Feral Knitter.

A Backyard Life

Berkeley, CA, is often thought of as a suburb of San Francisco. And in a way, it is. But visitors are usually startled to find a densely populated small city rather than the spread out acres of McMansions that the word "suburb" generally connotes. 

Note requisite rain barrel and compost bin... 

But despite the nearly Manhattan-level density, we enjoy a quiet life in our back yard. I love our little house! John is an excellent vegetable gardener, and even though we don't have a lot of space, I love telling him what I'd like to cook — next thing I know I've got some fresh Lacinato Kale or Jade green beans ready to toss in the pan.

Last weekend I pickled some green cherry tomatoes, which we have a veritable flood of. Don't they look cute? The jars joined the pints of Zucchini Relish that I canned in August. (I'd hoped this endeavor would make a dent in the zucchini harvest nagging at me, but only one gigantor was used....) 

I have a nice dye bench in the back yard, too. It was made out of the lumber we recovered when we dismantled an odd semi-porch in back. (This house was SUCH a fixer-upper when we bought in 6 years ago I can't tell you!) What a luxury to have a solid spot to work. 

And it's a good thing, too: A couple of weeks ago I received my first of four shipments from Birdsong's natural dye CSA (commmunity supported agriculture) called Nature's Cauldron. I was so excited to open the box! Lodgepole pine bark, yellow lichen, dried comfrey, and ever-so-fragrant fennel was packed in with a copy of Harvesting Color, a hank of perendale yarn mordanted with rhubarb, and alum for mordanting. 

Birdsong either grows or gathers all the dyestuffs that she includes in the shipments. I am intrigued by natural dyeing but have to admit that I'm quite unlikely to go out to gather dye materials myself (my lichen hunting notwithstanding), so I leapt when Birdsong announced the creation of this CSA. I'll be sharing photos of my dyeing experiments soon — for the most part I'm using Shetland jumperweight, with the intention of knitting a stranded garment (perhaps my Fair Isle From Scratch that has been stalled for so long!).

It's been nice to be home for a few weeks. I needed to get grounded again, and being out of doors — even if just in the backyard — is what this knitter needed.

Stuff I Keep Meaning to Tell You

I've got a long list of things I've thought you might like to know about. Of course, I've forgotten half this list. And the next time these things come to mind again, I'll say those fateful words to myself: "I have to remember this for the blog." So I remember that I was supposed to remember something, but I can't quite remember the salient details. 

At any rate, here's what I DO remember:

A propos the last post about self-talk for creativity:

• In the comments, Deb added an important item to the list: sense of humor.
• This post, Loving the Artist You Are (from back in May—thank you, Evernote, for remembering this for me), from Jane Dunnewald touches on the same issues.
• Seth Grodin wrote a short post entitled Just Imagine How Much We'd Get Done.... Read it! Actually, if you have a blog aggregator, add Seth's blog to the list. Although he is known as a business coach, much of what he writes has to do with learning and living.

If you wanted to be at the 3-day workshop but couldn't come, Debbie posted a description of her experience there on her blog.

If you are on Facebook, be sure to friend Knitfinder. Therese Shere's Knitfinder database is an incredible resource—because she is a professional indexer, Therese really understands how people look for information and how to organize it. On Facebook, Therese offers frequent links to breaking news in the knitting, spinning, and weaving worlds. 

Another post I liked at 

Halloween is coming up quickly, in knitter's time: Don't forget the charming (and free!) Scare Isle Tam pattern by Lorraine Condotta in last fall's Knitty. I've got yarn packs for $23.60.

I'm going to go to the Taos Wool Festival this year! If you plan to be there too, drop me a note. I've been to Taos before (love love love Weaving Southwest!), but I haven't been to the wool festival. 

SOAR (Spin-Off Autumn Retreat) 2012 will be held October 21-27 in Lake Tahoe, California. Some of us love to plan ahead.... or dream ahead. If spending money on spinning made me a good spinner, well, I'd be a world-class spinner.

Schoolhouse Press is re-running Joyce Williams' socks KAL. Even if you don't knit along, read through the instructions—I guarantee that you will learn a lot from this deeply missed master technician.

You know what's been very popular at FeralKnitter.com? Abbott Smith's Andalucia Scarf, a doubleknit scarf that uses color in a very sophisticated way. This is a beauty—and if you hate double knit, you could easily convert this to stranded knitting. 

Oh, and I wanted to tell you about the natural dye CSA (Nature's Cauldron) that Birdsong started: I got my first shipment last week and I've been happily busy with it. This deserves a full post (if I remember).

I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a lot of things. But I often tell people in my classes that "finished is beautiful." Ah! That reminds me of this page that Mary pointed me to: The Cult of Done Manifesto. Every point is valuable, but I especially like the last one: Done is the engine of more.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Edited to add 4 hours later:

I just remembered that I wanted you to know about Sara Lamb's post entitled The Cult of Perfection.

 

 

 

Freedom to Create

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever exactly as you envision it – ever.  Sometimes it is better.
            ~Natalie Chanin, of Alabama Chanin, writing in EcoSalon.com

It's all in how the colors are arranged..... As Mary said, the top one looks like clown barf and the bottom one looks great.

Six women participated in the 3-day Design Your Own Fair Isle workshop last weekend. My workshops are just that: not a time of passive accummulation of knowledge, but a chance to plunge in and create. The 3-day workshop takes the design process from germ-of-an-idea to defined-goal-and-a-swatch. Doesn't sound like much when I put it like that, but it's a real challenge for most people.

Including me. 

I don't think there's any substitute for persistence. Sure, the inspiration is important—the heart, the love, the enthusiasm. The joy.

But these rarely get us through the hours of creation. Somehow the idea has taken hold that creation is the moment of inspiration, that the follow-through is sort of an after-thought, something to be farmed out to someone else. Less important. The "craft" side of the "art." 

I'm as guilty as anyone—I love the playing with colors, the swatching, the sketching. I tend to fall flat on the completed garment side of the equation. Witness the baskets of half-finished sweaters lining my windowseat.

So what do we need to get the project done?

• A strong vision of the completed project.
• A desire to see it completed.
• A commitment to learning the skills to complete the project.
• Awareness of the mental demons that attempt to derail anything that involves effort and a loud inner voice to counteract those messages.
• Systems to support the project—for me, I have my mini-journals that allow me to return to projects when life has forced me to step away for awhile and I have my baskets to organize the projects. 
• Probably some other qualities that don't come to mind immediately..... Feel free to chime in!

Please notice that money, and time, and innate ability don't appear in this list.

Shadow, on the other hand, is totally uninterested in such discussions. Here he models the art of relaxation.